Al Gore: “This Crisis Had Been Building Long Before Donald Trump”

Al Gore, ex-Vice President acknowledged that President Trump concerning North Korea “inherited a very dangerous situation that has been building for some time.”

While talking about his new book, An Inconvenient Sequel, on BBC4 radio’s Best of Today, he also talked about the withdraw from the Paris climate accord and Trump’s strategy concerning North Korea.

“This crisis had been building long before Donald Trump entered the White House, and that should be remembered,” he stated.

He said he didn’t approve Trump’s “fire and fury” comment, but he admired his tactic to raise the sanctions on North Korea and also applauded his advisors like national security adviser H.R. McMaster and Defense Secretary James Mattis.

“These are thoughtful men, experienced, and that should be a source of some comfort as we look at how the U.S. administration is handling this crisis,” Gore stated.

During Gore time as a vice president North Korea was given an aid of $4 billion and also U.S. promised “two light-water nuclear reactors.”

“This agreement will help achieve a longstanding and vital American objective — an end to the threat of nuclear proliferation on the Korean Peninsula,” stated then President Bill Clinton in 1994. “This agreement is good for the United States, good for our allies, and good for the safety of the entire world.”

North Korea was required to “freeze and dismantle its nuclear program” and agree to inspections, even though they were allowed to keep the nuclear fuel rods “for an unspecified number of years,” this left an opportunity for them to build nuclear weapons during that time.

This agreement between North Korea and U.S. was named “Agreed Framework,” and it fell apart in 2000 with North Korea threatening to “restart missile tests” and the CIA finding out North Korea’s “secret uranium enrichment program.”

In 2015, was reported that “nuclear-armed North Korea already has hundreds of ballistic missiles that can target its neighbors in Northeast Asia but will need foreign technology to upgrade its arsenal and pose a more direct threat to the United States.”

Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security in 2015 reported that “the North likely has enough fissile material for at least 10 weapons, and that could increase to between 20 and 100 weapons by 2020.”